Robert Patterson (educator)

Robert Patterson (20 May 1743-22 July 1824) was Director of the US Mint and an educator.

Biography
Robert Patterson was born in Hillsborough, County Down, Northern Ireland on 20 May 1743, and he emigrated to Greenwich, New Jersey in the United States in 1768. Patterson was a principal at a Delaware academy when the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, and he instructed his students in military matters before he joined a militia company as an adjutant. He became a brigade major after serving as a surgeon in a New Jersey militia company for three years, and he taught at the University of Pennsylvania as a mathematics teacher from 1779 to 1814. From 1805 to 1824, he served as Director of the US Mint, producing coinage. Patterson died in 1824.